The original pen was a button filler. Like most fountain pens of the day, it used a sack inside the barrel to hold ink. A button under a “blind cap” on one end of the barrel Pushing the button bowed a pressure bar, which, in turn, compresses the sack. Release the button, the pressure bar straightens, and the sack expands, creating a vacuum, and draws ink into itself. It was designed to be two pens in one. It would have one configuration with a small blind cap and a regular cap to be a pocketpen, and a deskbase and a tail blind cap to be a desk pen. It was offered in black, lapis blue, red, and green. However, the most famous color was “PompeiiBrown”. This color looked more like orange, and earned the pen the nickname of “Big Red.”

The Dufold name was revived in 1939 for a line of smaller pens. These were closer in size to a Parker 51, and had a filler like the Vacumatic. These pens are not prized by collectors as the earlier pens, but do have a following. Production of this line ended in the fourties.